> >The scriptures were also read out in latin in
> church. So the congregatio
> > didn't have a clue what it meant - so what? To
> read it in vulgar local
> >language would pollute the supposed purity of the
> text. Is this also
> >supposed to be the case with the Abiding Book?
I don't think that pollution of the text was a sole cause for mass celebration in Latin (before 1963, Year of the Second Vatican Council). It was also a practical reason: until the diffusion of a national language and of alphabetism in Italy (but also in other catholic countries as I suspect) there would have not been a solid comprehension of the Scripture by the attending congregation: each region had its own dialect and just a few educated spoke and understood "Italian" (which is officially the Tuscanian Dialect). This ended roughly in the fifties, with the diffusion of mass media. The Church renounced to this rigidity of language (also) becuase it was no more necessary (in fact it was counter productive).
> I think that in this case, the West bears more
> similarity to the treatment
> of the Koran: The text will be known and understood
> by the congregations.
Sacred Art is an alternative to Scripture in being comprehended by an uneducated people. Does the Abiding Book support iconoclastism?
> A historical aside - which Latin translation of the
> bible did the catholic
> church declare as sacrosanct?
Historically I don't know, probably more than one confronted one to the other in order to establish a right one and a wrong or incomplete one. Today: the one approved by CE, i.e. Episcopal Conference, a national emanation of the Holy Office for the Defense of Faith.
Ciao,
Gian
--__--__-- Received on Thu Oct 16 07:01:49 2003
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